Reflecting on the changes with 55 days to go…

May 21^st on my blog, I wrote “Back to work tomorrow, but I am not looking forward to it… in fact I am dreading it…not for the work, but for the politics… something needs to change… but I am not sure what or how…”  At the moment I wrote it I had not considered retirement as an option…

My next post, three days later was titled “I may have retired today….”  Between the two, I guess I identified the change needed… and how… and did it… 

Now I am dealing with the ramifications of the decision… mostly good… 

There is paperwork… at work there is confusion… about roles going forward… about my current role… I feel like an observer rather than an employee… I have become the old curmudgeon…  I am enjoying the role… I get to observe, and comment in ways which would not have been possible on May 24^th… For then I was employed, but today I am becoming retired… so I get to comment, and be snarky as needed, and occasionally “F” off while at work… 

Unfortunately, I care too much to “F” off much… and things at the district (the “them” organization) are weird with a labor action pending and all that that brings to the party… So, I go to work… putter about end up working more than expected, but am not getting as much done as I would like…

Now 54 days to go… I took the ladies to the airport at O-dark-30 or so… they are off to Vancouver to meet a ship for a cruise to Alaska… dispatches suggest that earlier today they were sitting in a Starbucks neat the steam clock having coffee…  Meanwhile, here at home I am caring for the menagerie… two dogs, 4 indoor cats, 3 outdoor cats and some pigeons… I am writing… mostly a project for Colorado… I am working in the yard… but its hot, hotter than expected so less is getting done… except watering… I water and water and plants still look stressed…  

And I am considering resetting the toilet that the dog knocked loose…  Abby is a big girl and likes to chew things and so, when we leave she is confined to the bathroom… where she is eating the door frame and has knocked the toilet loose from the floor…  All equating to a project for me…

Meanwhile I am working on the Colorado project, trying to get traction on the writing I am responsible for … occasionally going outside and working on the yard… moving the hose… watering…  cutting stuff back… filling trash cans… dumping trash cans in the green waste bins… then I get hot and retreat to the house and the computer and writing…  I think I am practicing for retirement...

 

June Tomatoes….

We got our first tomatoes today… 3 red cherry, one orange cherry tomatoes… sliced with salt, pepper and basil from the garden, a little olive oil, some balsamic vinegar… a couple of bites each… but… June tomatoes…  My tomatoes went in late this year and I don’t deserve June tomatoes…

Garrison Keeler in his Lake Woebegone stories speaks of tomatoes in the garden, of the shame of the tomato dole… Speaking to ones failure to cultivate and care for tomatoes…  While this year I am not a leader, I have June tomatoes and so, am not on the tomato dole… 

It is hot… Work was 80 some… I reached over 90 on the way home… It promises to get hotter this weekend… They are predicting 120+ temperatures in Death Valley… high 120’s… some are suggesting they might reach the magical 134, the official hottest day on record.  If I didn’t have responsibilities, I might take a quick trip to the Valley of Death to see how hot hot can be… Sadly, not this time… but there is the possibility of a long hot summer, with decreasing responsibilities… and if hot is promised, maybe a trip to hot…

The tomatoes like the heat (if I keep then watered…)

The ladies are off early tomorrow… very early… ungodly early… a 4:30 am alarm… flying to Vancouver Canada to meet their ship… for a trip to Alaska via the inside passage.  I will be staying home… caring for the dogs and giving the diabetic cat her insulin shots…  going to work… (56 days left!) avoiding the park’s picket lines… and writing… I have a project due…  

At work (56 days… but who is counting) things are weird… I am not as productive as I would like… there are distractions… the park employees are likely to go on strike on July 4^th and 5^th… I work for the city, in the center of one of their parks… I am sympathetic to their strike…  The Park has canceled July 4^th, or at least the common national celebration… It is not clear what the house is supposed to be doing… I expect to go to work, stop and speak to the picketers… likely deliver donuts… then go to work to deal with the unknown situation…  I will lock the place down about 3:00, and go home to the dogs and barbeque something… 

It is also weird at work for a different reason… I am leaving… others know this… there is an expectation that I am not really working… just holding court for the near future… people don’t expect me to be there, to try... I would be easy to meet their expectations… I am trying not to.

I could be sitting with a cold beer under the grape arbor… for it is hot…

The Garden

I am spending most of the next couple of days in the garden…  It is spectacular.  Yesterday was the longest day of the year, the solstice… I have an urge to strip down and paint myself blue…  (please ignore that… )

For too long  I have ignored the back yard… instead I spent my weekends and my weekdays at work caring for a different house.

The vegetable garden is beginning to pop… I was late getting it in this year… I planted tomatoes  in May instead of late March or early April…  but they are getting big, and there is one tomato ripe, ready to pick… it’s a cherry, so not a big deal, but it is a tomato in June…  the first squash is ready too… a yellow crookneck… unlike the tomatoes there are many more squash nearly ready.

I picked a cup of blue berries last weekend… I will pick a cup again this weekend…  Yummy blue berries… 

I had to extend the bean trellis… they grow as much as a foot a day… This is promising…

The sisters garden (corn, beans, and pumpkins in a single bed) is growing, but I will plant more corn and beans today…  filling in the spots where the feral cats disrupted the seeds in search of a cat box…  I have a feeling that this year the concept may work (the sisters garden, not the “garden as cat box”…).

The cats (indoor cats, not the outdoor feral beasts…) have finished off the second pot of cat grass… there are two more planted, just sprouting…  nearby are sunflower and lettuces seedlings… for some reason a tray of nasturtiums never sprouted…  I planted two varieties from two different seed packets…  and nothing happened… I may replant…  I moved 4 pots of the sunflowers seedlings to a large pot… at the edge of the grape arbor… at 3 weeks they are over a foot tall…  I need to find homes for the other 12 pots of seedlings… then plant something new in the pots…

Meanwhile in back I continue to cut back the three years of ivy, and bottle brush, a Larch, and other fast growing green things that have taken over one side of the yard…  I ordered a second green bin from our local garbage company… at a cost of $3.00 per month… each green bin holds 4 garbage cans of green cuttings…  two hold just about what I want to cut back each week…  If I get very ambitious I will find a trailer and make a dump run or two…. Maybe later in the summer…  

I am building a couple of tall raised beds… laying pavers… running irrigation lines…  It is becoming a construction project.  I am looking thought my bins of supplies in the shed, finding that much of the needed material is there…  Finding forgotten tools… Even rebuilding the fence looks like fun.

The garden is my happy place.

63 days and counting... A study in the use of parenthesis

I think if you say you are thinking of retiring, you have already retired…

John Madden

He was speaking of sports stars… nearing the end of their careers… and their public stance as their careers ended… but…

It also speaks to all of us… (or at least me)

A month or so ago I decided to retire…The decision was quick… not planned… but based on some information and an unexpected trigger… 

I went from “I work here” to “I am retiring” in just over 24 hours... The morning of the second day I quit… First came disbelief and a hope that I was just angry and would get over it (I was and wouldn’t) Then came the realization and the negotiations…  “When are you retiring?” (we decided on late August)  and “will you stay until we find someone?” (Within reason, hence the roughly 90 days) followed after I turned in the written letter of resignation by “do you mean it” (yes)

So, now working out my roughly 90 some days.  I find that Madden was right…  once you say “it” (retired) you are (retired)…

I have seen others who set a retirement date… then retire in fact earlier… in effect abandoning the job while continuing to hold a spot in the organization and collect a pay check while holding up a single finger toward their fellow employees… (In general employees leaving don’t actually raise their middle finger… but based on their actions, they might as well)

Additionally, there is a “understanding” among public employees (or an expectation by public employers) that we, the public employees should give more than the typical 2 weeks notice…  We after all are sworn public employees, with extra responsibilities… (We are expected to report to work in time of public emergencies, and if we don’t, we can be fired or possibly prosecuted…) 

So, I have quit, as so, I am no longer committed to the job… but still committed to the house, and the volunteers and fellow staff left behind… to abandoned them would be abandoning friends…  The job, not so much…  I am really trying to not raise the middle finger, in actuality or or by actions taken or not...

So I am trying to meet commitments… attend the meetings… keep down the snarky… and I got just got screwed…  I changed long standing personal plans to attend a meeting to support a project I believed in… a project which had been canceled before the meeting, but no one told me… so I missed an event which I had long planned to attend… for nothing…  This brings back the anger that lead to the decision to leave… had it not been for the ones left behind (particularly Barb) today would have probably been my last day. Done, over…

Meanwhile folks, some of the ones left behind, were changing things around my job… not to be mean… but to solve their problems and try to transition… but in the process were dumping stuff in my bucket… a bucket long overfull without capacity to accept more manure…  They did not intend to cause my bucket to overflow… that was an unintended consequence… but now I am standing ankle deep in crap…

To make matters worse, the puddle of crap makes me less effective, less productive, less able to care as I work our my days… which leads to additional frustration… and more anger…

Meanwhile I am trying to address un-related work issues… and others are apparently playing games… Some (outside both mine and “the other” organization) are assuming I am leaving, and trying to re-arrange the deck chairs, looking for an advantage…  not understanding I am, for now still here…  They are saying thing to people... They are sending emails… emails forwarded to me… the whole non-sense confirms the decision to leave.  Eventually the emails are likely to lead to a confrontation… (“You, sir (”Sir” being unearned term of (dis)respect) are a damn liar”) (hint, don’t be a damn liar))

So, in the end… there is a job to do, that I don’t care about… and people doing stupid things around me, which once I might have over looked, things that are making me angry… 

Again… thinking about changing the last day…

Hot…

The weather this weekend is forecast to be hot… the hottest so far this year…  over 100 degrees inland…a year that so far has seemed warmer than recent past years.

I welcome the hot weather…  The garden is in and will benefit…  I enjoy the heat… more than most people.  I have on more than one occasion visited Death Valley in the summer…  Sunset Magazine has an article on the crazy people who visit Death Valley in the summer…  By logical deduction based on Sunset as an authoritative source, you may now assume I am one of the crazy people…

I also visit Death Valley in other seasons… most recently last March, but previously New Years week… each time I visit it is different, each time compelling…   In March I was camped on an alluvial fan… In December I stayed at Furnace Creek Ranch…  In mid-summer (many years ago) I was camped in an empty Furnace Creek camp ground…  We ended up sleeping on the golf course… under the sprinklers… after all, it was hot…

Here, along the coast, long the bay, it won’t be that hot… just hot enough to want to cook outside… to sleep with the windows open and enjoy the evening, at least until the heat driven winds kick up and the fog moves in… 

Here, at home, the heat is what makes the garden grow…  here, heat is our friend… as long as there is water enough, with heat the plants grow… with more heat they grow faster… if later in the year fruit would ripen with the heat…  so with the garden in and established, the heat is welcome…  beans are climbing 6” in a day… tomatoes are setting fruit… corn is sprouting… 

The last several summers have been short on hot…  We have a water park at work, aka… the place I formerly worked… and the weather since we opened It has not been hot… and business has not be as robust as expected… we (or the group of which I once was one of the we of…) have great hopes for this summer…  

Back to the garden… I find myself out, hand watering morning and evening…  part of a series or rituals that include walking the dogs and feeding the pigeons…  The pigeons now an important source of manure for the garden…  All part of the circle…

I am planting the third round of corn… a second round of lettuces… a third round of basil… all extending the bounty that the garden will soon grow into…

Over several years, the garden, the yard has become overgrown… but with new found free time comes time to work in the garden and yard… Today I ordered a second green bin to hold the garden debris  that comes with more free time…   I am making good progress, but with progress comes more debris… so a second green bin…  each decision leads to another…  so retirement leads to two green bins and $3.00 per month… 

And as I write this outside the smoker sits, heat hovering at 160 degrees… a pork shoulder, some ribs inside… the heat is coming from hardwood charcoal… augmented with grape cuttings from the vines overhead…  not this year’s cuttings, instead last year’s cuttings… stored in a spare trash can… now dry… ready for the smoker… such is the way of the garden…  the circle…  

I tend to the smoker… adding charcoal… adding grape vine cuttings… I “mop” the pig with the vinegar marinade… creating piggy goodness…  It is my dirty little R2-D2 unit… dome top… full of piggy goodness…

So, its hot… and all about the garden and the smoker and food… 

And 79 days to retirement…  (But who is counting? (beyond me))

Randy